"Women are entitled to both lipstick and free speech." [Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth, 1990]

Grrrl Perspective is a little blog where three young feminists share their views on music, media, mysogyny, and more. We want keep the fun and humor in feminism, while helping others understand why it's still so important today. We believe in equality and empowering women, but without putting men down. It's time to do away with the old stereotypes, so please ladies, leave your burning bras at the door!

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September 16, 2010

On girl-hate and sisterhood.

If there’s one thing I can’t stand hearing, its girls saying how they “hate all other girls”, or “only hang out with guys because they are less drama”. Some of us like to call this the special snowflake syndrome. I have a hard time believing that out of the whole population of females, you are the only one who doesn’t cause drama. Plus, from my experiences, guys cause just as much drama as girls do. I don’t think it’s much of a gender issue, but rather a personality issue.

I think what grinds my gears about all of this is that girls seem to say this hateful stuff in an attempt to be seen as “one of the guys”, which is really problematic. It’s like when a group of guys say a really sexist joke in front of a few girls. A couple of the girls try to explain why the joke is offensive and sexist and not funny in the least, while the other girl laughs out loud to show that she finds it funny. Then the guys proceed to say something like“she SHE gets it, why don’t you?”. It’s just not cool, it’s seen all too often, and it puts us in the fight against misogyny in an awkward position. I’m tired of being seen as having no sense of humor, or overly sensitive and “politically correct”, because I won’t stand for anybodies sexist jokes or rape jokes or so on. I actually have a great sense of humor, thank you very much, but some stuff just isn’t funny and shouldn’t be joked about- and it makes me sad to see so many girls do so in order to be placed higher up on the male pedestal.

But I’m not here to condemn any girl, so I’m not going to sit here and say that it’s their fault. I mean think about all of the negative attributes associated with women- we are weak, catty, unfunny, emotional and the list goes on. So who would want to be around that, or even act like that for that matter, when you can be one of the strong, tough, fun, hilarious, chill, drama-free guys!? Much like that graphic above says, I think we all need to realize that women are not all alike. We don’t all have the same hobbies, interests, or overall personalities. So saying that you “hate all other girls”, or “only hang out with guys because they are less drama” is an extremely silly thing to do, think before you gender stereotype.

The funny thing about all of this is that I myself mostly only hang out with guys; I have very few female friends. I know, I know, “what, then who are you to talk!?”. But I actually wish I had more female friends, I long for them but am not sure how to go about actually making them. I think there is something really special and beautiful about sisterhood and female relationships, as corny as that may sound, it’s true. I’m not sure why I, and other girls I’ve talked to, have a hard time making female friends, but I’d like to think that it has a lot to do with the sheer amount of girl-hate going on these days. I know that we've touched on the subject of girl-hate in here before, but I just think it’s really sad and unfortunate that it’s so common, and it doesn’t seem to be talked about as much as it should be in feminist spaces. I like to believe that we as females look up to each other, and too many times that love and admiration is taken and twisted into jealousy and hate. Girl-hate is something that I firmly believe needs to be eliminated as soon as possible. When girls can be more open and kind to each other I feel that it will break down a lot of barriers and make many things easier for us and our friendships.

I was pretty scatter-brained in this entry and touched on some vulnerable topics, so I apologize. But as my hunt for some female friends continues (oh shit, I feel like a female version of the main character from the movie ‘I love you, Man’) stop the hate and spread the girl virus!

5 comments:

Thank you very much! It always bothers me when I hear girls go on and on about how much those who share their parts are the bane of their existence. The majority of my friends are guys, but it's nothing to do with hating other girls. I'm from a small town and the majority of the people I happen to get along with are male. My few female friends are among my closest and most adored, especially my platonic lifemate.

I think a lot of younger girls it an attempt to impress guys- make it seem like they're unique and understand men while still being available sexually. So much of a girls teens and early twenties is centered on sex and dating that it's downright scary. Truth is, most guys I know realize that these declarations of girl-hate are total BS. It's not the way to a guy's heart- I'm always very clear when I think somethings sexist when hanging out the guys, and they generally shut up because I'm truly "one of the guys"- not because I'm masculine (I'm very big on the high heels, dresses, and lipstick) or attempt to hate on my gender, but because I'm a member of the friendship group and they respect me and my opinions as a person. Myself and a couple other gay girls actually hung out with the same guys in high school a lot of the time, and I later realized we got along so well not because of the lack of sexual tension (the only dating between us was myself and one of the girls, and we had the most laid-back break-up I've ever heard of, let alone experienced), but because we didn't have to think of each other as the "the other": we were just a bunch of friends who enjoyed the same things and got along well. When you take away the idea that men and woman are of different substance, you get along better with most everyone. I get the same experience with the friends my brother and I share- once the need to see someone is a romantic or sexual sense is gone, you're more likely to see someone as a person and not a gender.

I love this post. I've always had lots of casual male friends and a few close female friends. I think it's cause I was always tagging along with my uncle and I ended up friends with a lot of his friends. I don't know. Either way I don't like people who hate the "other" and I don't trust people who hate their own. I was into a beautiful hippie boy for a while when I was younger and it got to be such a turn off when he'd get on his feminist soap box and turn it into something about how awful men were. As a woman, of course I'm not going to want to spend my time with people who hate women, but it turns out I really don't want to spend time with people who stereotype and disrespect any group, whether I'm a part of that group or not. Well, anyway, thank you for this post. It stirred up my feisty.

I disagree - socially women are raised differently, the vast majority engage in girl hate...when we choose not to spend time with other women we are not saying we are different, it is saying that we don't want that sort of negativity around us. If we find women who don't engage in girl hate then fantastic, we are all different and some do not attack other women, but socially these women are in the minority whether you like it or not.